Unpopular Dissent

This post is not so much political as it has political implications.

With apologies to Michel Foucault:

We have all been made aware of what it means to be “overweight”. It’s not “normal”, not “average”, not healthy, the product of an inappropriate lifestyle, of a preexisting and ultimately arbitrary metabolic capability over which one has no ability to manipulate, caused by a compulsive mental illness. This is the story of the being of overweight, and it is reinforced by images of overweight buffoons, intellectuals, and unbeautiful people who regard their bodies with contempt and disdain.

Recently it has become popular to talk of the phenomenon of being “underweight”, as well. It has a similar narrative: “abnormal”, below-average, unhealthy, caused by inappropriate lifestyle choices, compounded by perhaps the mental illnesses causing anorexia or bulimia. We think of these people as “sickly-looking” and “corpse-like”. They, like the overweight, are misinformed about something.

What does it mean, then, to be “weight”? Can one be “weight”? Perhaps it is better to invent a term of being the “correct” weight, which I will call being “ofweight.” What is this ideal that so few people are able to obtain and/or maintain? How does one gain knowledge of being “ofweight?” I argue that being “ofweight” is an unattainable and ultimately arbitrary ideal, the purpose of which is to consume the consciousness of those who strive for it, as a way of maintaining control of bodies and occupying the active wills of those who do not as of yet embody the ideal (read: everyone); because being not ofweight is as much a psychological disposition as it is a social one, I propose constructing an account of the lived experience of a not ofweight person: a phenomenology of non-ofweight consciousness.

Lucky enough for my proposed endeavor, I have been what is termed overweight for the majority of my life. I have learned to regard my body similarly with contempt and disdain: I shower because body odor offends others around me, not because I mind; I dress because my body must be covered, not because I desire to be fashionable; I eat because I must do so to survive, so I might as well eat well if I’m going to be forced to do it at all. I am obliged to take care of my body by my social context, not my own desires; I am forced to be self-conscious because of others.

My body exists to continue the functioning of my mind. Almost as a direct result of this functioning, my mind is consumed by considerations of the operations of my body almost constantly. In order to keep my mind working, it must, by necessity, consider the interests of my embodiment.

I am constantly reminded of my being overweight: shopping for jeans and being unable to find a length, waist, and thigh which fit; the tightening of old t-shirts around my gut; the constant bombardment of the images of indie-hipster Arts students in the library who wear their size 27 skinny-leg jeans with pride.

The way this obsession consumes my thoughts reveals a more sinister aspect of the desire to be ofweight; that is, its ability to force subjects to discipline themselves accordingly: self-surveillance. Who does not want to be healthy? The juridico-medical discourse makes it clear that being overweight severely increases risk of heart-disease and other such circulatory ailments.

I must strive to make myself more healthy by obtaining the ofweight ideal. Who does not want to be “normal”, who does not want to be “average” when the categories of “below-” and “above-average” have such negative social connotations as being “under” or “overweight”? In order not to be disparaged, I must obtain the ofweight ideal. Yet this classification of being “ofweight” is assigned so arbitrarily by these medical and social discourses that an actual instance of the embodied ideal is so rare that it is almost negligible.

People in top physical condition are, as the moniker suggests, heavily conditioned in order to obtain an ideal. Yet, even the most well-defined body builder to the external eye must be self-conscious of all the places where their muscle definition needs to be improved, hence the turn towards steroids to bypass their reality. Even the most heart-healthy, cardiovascular athlete spends the majority of their time training to maintain their fitness, hence the turn to increased blood-oxygen levels to improve the affects of training and performance.

If it is so that I overeat, I feel it is because of the act’s ability to open up an escape route from obligation and reality. Some people smoke cigarettes, others marijuana, all the way from meditation to injecting intravenous heroin to escape reality. Eating allows for a time where I am not consumed by tasks and obligations that I ought to be doing. By eating more and more often, I am allowing myself to escape from reality more often, for longer periods of time.

We are all consumed by these unattainable body ideals, and they serve to absorb large portions of our time and effort. The very activities of pursuing body ideals is a method of control and normalisation; the fact that the ideals are unattainable makes the power all the more sinister. We know we cannot obtain our body desires, yet we focus so very often on this very process. Even the quite common notion of being made “self-conscious” of one’s weight is a testament to the existence of a notion of being ofweight, as well as being forced to discipline oneself accordingly to obtain this being. When one is made constantly psychologically aware of one’s being not ofweight, the awareness manifests itself in self-disciplinary actions.

This is essentially how Foucault’s notion of “biopower” functions. An instrument of regulatory regimes, biopower makes people aware of their embodiment (physically, Foucault focuses on sexuality) and works in ways which administer life. Reglulatory regimes are “life-administering”: not only do they work to make sure that life continues (as opposed to sovereign regimes which have the power to take life), but that this life is constantly under surveillance and is thusly administered norms through scientific rationality.

This train of thought has by no means arrived at its final destination, as is the case with all of my writing. It is merely a textual photograph of my ideas at a certain point in time. There is absolutely no way I could write down all of my thoughts and developments in one sitting, so I have chosen to publish this article to my blog before it is complete* because I feel that the importance of the problems it addresses outweighs the rest of what I want to say. I will most likely come back to this writing in the near-to-not-so-distant

*“complete” is itself an unattainable ideal